


you can't play (on broken strings)

by sarcastic_fina



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Introspection, Mid-Twenties Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5159120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcastic_fina/pseuds/sarcastic_fina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, she was a fully operational human being. Or as close to one as she has ever gotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can't play (on broken strings)

**Author's Note:**

> **inspiration** : [picture](http://elvenlake.tumblr.com/post/132674663752/r2d2-untitled-by-d%C5%BEesika-devic)

Darcy has been sitting at the same bus stop for three hours. Her butt fell asleep early into hour one. The sun is setting, making the sky yellow bleeding into a pinkish-purple. It’s pretty. And if she focuses solely on that, maybe everything else doesn’t seem so  _crushingly_ terrible. 

Mid-life crisis seems like such a huge term. Also, not one most would connect to a twenty-something grad student. But here she is. Having a mental breakdown at a bus stop, watching bus after bus go by, while she sits, lost in thought.

She doesn’t have the money for a swagged out car, so she can’t go overcompensating dude in his mid-forties on this. And given how distracted she is, that’s probably for the better, or she’d end up driving through a red light and putting other people at risk. So instead, she sits, and listens to the sound of rubber on pavement, squealing tires here, honking horns there, the pumping bass of a teenager’s stereo system rattling the windows of a car that’s a little  _too_ low-rider. She used to ride a bike, until it was stolen. That’s probably the least of her problems, but it does add to the pile.

She has an essay in her backpack with a slanted  _B-_ scrawled on it. She has no reason to complain, really. She knocked that one out in a couple hours of scrambled and stressed out, desperate to just get it done already. All things considered, the grade isn’t terrible, especially considering how little actual work she put into it. But the problem is that it’s become her norm. She is the least effort possible, B- student she once mocked in her head.

It wasn’t so long ago she was handing in A+ work while maintaining a regular work out routine at the gym, a part-time job, and still managing to put on clean, even fashionable, outfits from time to time. Now she’s lucky if the sweats she’s wearing don’t have a stain from last night’s microwaveable dinner. She skips pilates for a pint of ice cream and ignores her responsibilities by burying herself in Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram. She  _hates_ her job; every single aspect of it. And laundry… Can she do it later?  _Please_.

Once upon a time, she was a fully operational human being. Or as close to one as she has ever gotten. Now she barely drags herself from her bed, looks for every opportunity to avoid anything pertaining to school, and, well, apparently spends too much time at bus stops.

Maybe it’s just a day for introspection. That’s okay, right? Maybe at the end of all of this, she’ll have the answers to all of life’s biggest questions. She’ll know exactly what she wants to do with herself and she’ll return to being that totally sane and hard-working student of before. She’s helped save the world a time or two, grad school should be  _easy-peezy_. 

Her mind wanders briefly, wondering how Jane’s doing; if Thor is planet-side; what next big apocalypse-like catastrophe might be on the horizon. When she blinks back into her current, non-threatened state of life, she finds herself staring distantly at a puddle. There’s a leaf resting on top of it, orange and torn, but still managing to stay afloat. Is she the leaf or the puddle? If she’s the leaf, does that make the puddle school or life in general?

Another bus goes by. The number 14. She counts the people in the seats. 7. Seven people managed to go through their regular day to day lives, get on the bus, and go home. For some reason, she stalled. She didn’t get past sitting on the bench, pulling her student pass from the left pocket of her purse, and holding it between clammy hands.

It’s going to be dark soon. With the dark comes the cold; she can already feel a breeze skittering past, soaking through her too-large sweater and her too-thin jeans. She remembered her wool socks today, which was a terrible idea this morning, leaving her feet gross and sweaty, but a great idea now, when she can feel the chill settling inside the bones of her fingers, which are holding onto her pass just a little too tightly. Her apartment is warm. Small, but warm. Not for the first time, she wonders why she never got a cat. Maybe having a furry companion would help get her out of her funk. 

 _Is it a funk?_  Does everybody go through this eventually? Does every grad student hit that brick wall of motivation? Maybe she should ask around. Make a poll. Beg her fellow students to tell her she’s not the only one who feels like her brain has leaked out of her ears and forfeited any interest in school or a social life or life in general.

Her phone dings at her hip, tucked inside a pocket of her bag. A text, from her mom most likely. Her mom’s a worrier.  _Did you get home all right? Do you need money? How is school going? Have you made friends? Are you eating healthy? What about extra curriculars?_ She was the mom that checked in every night to make sure homework was done and teeth were brushed; who joined the PTA and took actual, _legit_ , notes at parent-teacher interviews; who made all the snacks for the various sports or clubs her kid attended. The kind of parents that #1 Mom mugs were made for. 

Darcy loves her mom, she really does, but she’s just pretty sure she never quite lived up to the expectation her mother had for her. Her mom’s never  _said_ so, and it’s probably mostly Darcy’s own insecurity, but she can’t help but think a mom like that deserves a better daughter. The kind of daughter that keeps stacks of color coordinated flash cards of terms and definitions; that has a monthly schedule on her wall to keep track of all the fun an interesting clubs and extra-curriculars she’s joined; that never puts off a paper she knows is worth a good chunk of her grade, but instead prepares ahead of time and over a couple weeks. Darcy is  _not_ that daughter. She’s not sure she ever was, even with the A+ papers. She does her readings and she knows what she’s talking about most of the time, but she’s never been hardcore about school. Something she’s regretting now that’s she knee-deep in grad school and nose-deep in debt. Nose-deep is being kind, but that’s yet another thing she doesn’t want to think about.

How do people do it? How do they go about their lives and not want to fall to their knees, pull at their hair, and scream until they lose their voice? How do they cope with knowing the world is  _huge_ (aliens and other realms huge) and they are _small_  (grain of sand small) and there is a really,  _really_ good chance that no matter what they do, it will amount to very little in the greater picture? 

There’s probably a word for what she is. Depressed might be it. Or at least a contributing factor. Or maybe it’s just that she’s seen so much that regular life seems so…  _strange_. But she’d been adamant that she was going to go on and become a normal, functioning part of society and not stay Jane’s intern forever. Especially since it wasn’t helping her debt get any smaller. Now that she’s back in school, she’s questioning that. She’s questioning a lot of things.

The street lamps blink on, and one lights up the sidewalk in front of the bus stop. It meets the end of her boots, while the rest of her stays in the muted glow of an ending day. Eventually, when it gets dark, all anyone will see of her is the tips of her boots. That’s probably a metaphor for something.

She left her gloves at home; she regrets that. They’re more like mittens, but she can fold back the top so her fingers are free to move. She usually does, so they’d still be cold, but there’s a strange comfort in wearing them all the same. She knit them herself; a hobby that helps her de-stress. She hasn’t touched her knitting needles in…  _too long_. Months, maybe. She misses them; how they felt in her hands, the familiarity, the ease of motion, the knowledge that if she made a mistake, she could correct it. 

 _Has_  she made a mistake? Is Grad school a mistake? Is any of what she’s doing a big, fat, giant mistake? Maybe. A  _B-_  is a grade. It’s one grade on one paper and she has a lot more papers in her future. Maybe the next one will be a  _B-_  or a  _C+_  or an  _A_. She doesn’t know. She does know that it’s cold and the sun is setting and, in the distance, she can see the number 14.

She’s not saying her mid-twenties crisis is over. Not by a long shot. But she has school in the morning. Her warm apartment is waiting for her, her knitting needles are missing her, her freezer is full of semi-edible food, and her mom is due to call her any—

There’s a buzz at her hip, followed by a familiar ringtone. She doesn’t ignore it this time. She digs it out of her purse with frozen fingers that are just a little too stiff. Standing from the bench, she moves out into the light of the street lamp and raises a hand to make sure the bus driver sees her. The bus starts slowing down just as she answers her ringing phone.

“Hey mom…” She smiles faintly to herself and hitches her bag higher on her shoulder as she steps to the side while the bus comes to a stop in front of her. “Yeah, sorry I didn’t answer your text, I know you get worried. I’ve just been distracted…” She climbs on the bus, swipes her card, and moves down the aisle to the very back of the bus. Taking a seat in the corner by the window, she tucks her feet atop the seat across from her and sighs. “Uh, yeah, no,f I’m not great.” Staring out the window as the sky welcomes the night, she nods. “Actually, I do wanna talk about it…”


End file.
